A Salute To A Mathematician; To Be Exhibited At Paris Design Fair

EULER’S ASHES is a tray that originated from an interchangeable table composition of the HERR EULERtable by Douglas & Company; a tribute to Swiss mathematician Leonhard Euler’s logical diagrams of representing areas of overlap among circles.

Aged 76, at about midday on the 18th of September 1783 after a lunch with his family, Euler was discussing the newly discovered platet Uranus and its orbit with a fellow academician. All of a sudden the pipe Euler was smoking slipped from his hand and moments later with the words Ich sterbe! (I am dying!), he lost consciousness and died a few hours later.

Douglas & Company was invited to create an object specifically for the exhibition that evokes a sense of play and celebration of African design. Originally conceptualised as an ashtray with tribute to Leonhard Euler’s last living hours, the tray can really be used for anything. A combination of glazed and unglazed stoneware is used in a rich earthy colour palette.

The AKAA Art and Design Fair will host 38 galleries and 150 artists from 28 different African countries inside the Carreau du Temple, a former clothes market in Paris from 10-12 November 2017.

ABOUT DOUGLAS & COMPANY
Douglas & Company is a Cape Town-based architecture and design studio headed up by Jan and Liani Douglas. The duo enjoys working across scales to create unique and functional pieces that are inspired by their interest in the tradition of building and making.